Water Quality Division

Blue Thumb Program

Oklahoma Blue Thumb Leadership Summits Report

Summer, 2007

Oklahoma Blue Thumb staff hosted three separate leadership summits during the summer of 2007 where volunteers shared ideas and opinions about how to make the Blue Thumb program more effective. One summit was on a Friday and two were on Saturdays. The locations were in different regions of the state.

July 13 Robbers Cave State Park

August 11 Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge

September 29OK Scenic Rivers Commission Office on the Illinois River near Tahlequah

September 29

Summary of Process and Comments

Each of the three sessions was well attended and the participants enjoyed the opportunity to talk about issues with other people interested in water quality. The daily schedule began at 8:30 a.m. with introductions, followed by a brief overview of the Blue Thumb Water Quality Education Project and its goals and descriptions of what each of the staff members does. Volunteers were divided into small groups and given questions to discuss and yellow “stickies” for their answers. When the conversation seemed to lag, the larger group reconvened and each of the small groups reported using the yellow stickies as a reminder of the discussion. The stickies were placed on a flip chart under appropriate topics so the Blue Thumb staff would have a record of the comments.

After a short break, small groups reconvened to discuss another topic. Some of these secondary topics were planned and some were the direct result of earlier comments.

Lunch was provided and the “round table” discussions ended between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. each day.

After each meeting, the comments recorded on the yellow stickies were typed up and sent to each participant. After the last meeting, all of the comments were collated. Those comments are attached to this document as Appendix A.

This document is an attempt to distill the common ideas from each of the three summits. They appear to fall into the following themes:

There were many kudos for the program and the staff. The program continues to grow and focus on water quality education. Blue Thumb provides a statewide network of people interested in water quality. Those people are generally well educated and come from a variety of backgrounds. We are raising environmental consciousness and empowering citizens, opening the door for citizen involvement in the state. The staff remains responsive, always available by phone.

What is the role of the volunteer? Not everyone can monitor or wants to monitor. How can we phase new people into the program? Some suggested roles for volunteers are:

monitor,

information specialist,

coordinator,

organizer,

educator,

representative at other meetings,

marketing specialist,

website design,

curb marker.

Volunteers crave larger gatherings for networking. They have enjoyed the brainstorming this year and the statewide conference last year. They feel recharged after these meetings. There were many comments about the need for “social” activities associated with the quality assurance sessions that would include other Blue Thumb friends who may not be monitoring currently. In addition, there is a general consensus that we need a large annual meeting and more regional activities.

Work-week volunteerism is a problem for many. How can we offer training and other activities without requiring taking time off from work?

Blue Thumb must clearly define the goals and time commitment for each task. The time commitment could be as simple as work until the task is complete – as long as the tasks are small.

How do we get people who have trained in the past involved and keep them active?

The training session for Blue Thumb volunteers continues to be shortened as it is difficult to find people that have the time to devote two full days to training. Our volunteers like the training they have received, but request that it not be in the work week, that it be shorter still and that there be some sort of mentoring that will help new volunteers feel comfortable with the monitoring. (This mentoring will be discussed in more detail in the section on monitoring.)

The overwhelming suggestion was that we offer training in modules of not more than four hours. This would offer the opportunity for people to come to things that interest them and not require such a large block of time commitment. It would also offer opportunities for continuing education. It sounds like we could offer workshops in the evenings and on weekends that would draw from the community. Obviously, for some courses there would be prerequisites and those should be clearly listed in the publicity and on the website. Other courses could be attended by anyone in the community. Some of the topic suggestions are listed below.

Stream Ecology

Chemical Monitoring

Flora

Fish ID

Macro ID

Mapping/GIS

Data mining

Watershed education

Historical/cultural understanding of the watershed

Site selection/landowner contact

Educational tools/models

Results – What happens to the data?

Transition from training to field (mentoring)

Related programs/conferences

Rain gardens/rain barrels

Conservation BMPs

How to approach local government

How to staff events

Creek walks

Bio-blitz of a watershed

If we went to a module approach to training, it would be possible to bring in outside experts to teach the session.

This section covers communication within Blue Thumb: between staff and volunteers and between volunteers.

Very few people read newsletters and/or long emails. They see that it arrived, put it aside for later, and then find it months or years later. The volunteers love the short hand-written notes from Cheryl and will read a short email, possibly even following a hot-link to a website.

Volunteers like the periodic larger regional and statewide meetings.

Volunteers would like a Blue Thumb Directory listing the names and contact information for volunteers. It should have all volunteers listed alphabetically and then several lists of names sorting volunteers by categories (e.g. location, skill sets or qualifications, regional leaders)

Blue Thumb should offer groundwater screening and educational tools.

Volunteers would like to visit other Blue Thumb sites around the area, region, and state.

Blue Thumb should provide volunteers with PR materials.

Blue Thumb should publicize other interesting events around the state.

Volunteers should contact their local Conservation District to let them know what is being done in the County.

Blue Thumb should teach volunteers how to contact their state and local elected officials.

There is very little awareness among the volunteers about what Blue Thumb does aside from training and monitoring. This is a clear indicator that we need to be “tooting our own horn” a bit more. Perhaps there would be a place on the website for staff and volunteers to post a short write-up and photos of community activities.

Community Education suggestions are listed below.

Work with schools - elementary through college and university (consider the impact of empowering young adults to become environmental leaders)

Work with landowners

Make data public

Personal use

Available for science classes in the schools

Offer Blue Thumb site visits

Creek walks

Rain gardens

Rain barrels

Best Management Practices (BMPs)

Develop a magic show for schools

Help scout groups with merit badges

Get local businesses to sponsor creek cleanups

Single event

Keep a section of stream clean

Get into other areas (like Ft. Sill)

Sponsor a bio-blitz for a single watershed

Use community service hour requirements and inmate populations for creek clean-ups

The leadership summits were a very good way to evaluate what we are doing well and where we could improve. There appear to be three major things that will improve the Blue Thumb program considerably.

Develop a Blue Thumb specific website for better communication with volunteers and with the public.

Shorten the Blue Thumb training sessions to about 4 hours and offer modules more often. These modules could be used for continuing education for volunteers or could attract outsiders for a topic that is interesting to them.

Work on development of better PR to announce upcoming events and tout the things we are doing.

Almost everything else that was suggested will fit into this framework easily.